A digital rights organization has claimed to have scraped a vast number of songs from Spotify and is getting ready to release them publicly.
Possible Boost for AI Development
Observers said the apparent data breach could boost AI companies searching for material to develop their technology.
A group known as Anna’s Archive reported it had obtained 86 million music files from the platform and 256 million rows of metadata such as artist and record names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100 million songs, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire catalog.
“We have identified and deactivated the nefarious user accounts that were involved in unlawful scraping,” said a company representative.
The Stockholm-based service, which has more than 700 million subscribers worldwide, added that an inquiry into unauthorized access found a third party scraped public metadata and employed questionable tactics to bypass DRM [digital rights management].
Archive's Declared Mission and Worries
The streaming service does not think the audio taken by Anna’s Archive has been made public yet. Anna’s Archive, which is recognized for providing links to copyright-infringing books, wrote in a blog it wanted to create a ‘preservation archive’ for music.
They asserted the audio files accounted for 99.6% of all music listened to by Spotify users and would be distributed via ‘torrents’, a means of sharing large digital files online.
“Of course Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, but it’s a fantastic start,” said Anna’s Archive, which frames its purpose as “preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture”.
AI Training and Copyright Battleground
A composer and campaigner for defending artists’ copyright, remarked the breached music would likely be utilized for training artificial intelligence systems.
“Training on illegally sourced material is sadly common in the tech sector, so this accessed music is highly likely to end up instructing AI models,” he said.
The group's website makes references to a large online archive, a huge online repository of pirated books that has allegedly been used by Meta to train its systems.
A founder of an artificial intelligence company wrote on LinkedIn that members of the public could in theory “build their own private free equivalent of the service”. He added it could also allow tech companies to “train on modern music at a large volume”.
Copyright has emerged as a key issue between artists, authors and content creators on one side and tech giants on the other.
Policy Proposals and Responses
Across Britain, creative professionals have protested against a government suggestion to allow AI companies use copyright-protected work without consent unless the rights holder signals. Virtually every participant to a government consultation on the proposal has supported artists’ concerns.
The secretary of state for science, research and technology informed parliament this month there was “no clear consensus” on the matter, noting that ministers would “take the time to get this correct”. The administration has committed to make policy proposals on AI and copyright by next year.
